Work in progressIt is some time since I last posted photos of the Burford Branch here, but the layout is continuing to make steady (if rather slow) progress. At the beginning of this year, I decided that I would not touch a single item of rolling stock throughout the year, but would concentrate instead on buildings for the layout, starting with the brewery buildings behind the station.
These photos were taken in the course of carrying out the work and, at the time of writing, this group of buildings is still incomplete. Architectural model-making (even when you are trying to keep the detail down to an absolute minimum) is a time-consuming process.
The first shot below shows the location of the buildings that have been worked on, replacing the card mock-ups seen earlier. These buildings form part of the brewery behind the station. The buildings as seen here are in the form of styrene shells, with the beginnings of their roof structures, but still at a fairly early stage of construction.
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I decided to pencil in the windows, rather than cutting them out and fitting the etched windows frames that I had originally intended to use. The intention is that these rearmost buildings should be seen as, in effect, a three-dimensional extension of the backscene. (In this next view, the brewery loading platform had yet to receive its canopy.)
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Having built the shells of the buildings around the brewery yard, I set about building up the ground surface around them, starting with the (dummy) wagon turntable, followed by paving of the inset track.
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The rearmost buildings are plain styrene sheet. The rest are built from Wills scenic sheet, intended by the manufacturer to represent lime-washed stone, but when painted they are ideal for portraying Cotswold stone. The buildings were painted with artists’ acrylics, using the same colours as on the backscene (a combination of raw sienna, cobalt blue and titanium white) so as to produce what I hoped would be a seamless transition from the flat backscene to the 3D models.
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The roof of the brewery loading dock is tiled with self-adhesive laser-cut card strips of Welsh slate from CD3D Models. York Modelmaking produce a similar product. As supplied, the grey slate colour is too dark, but is easily modified by repainting. Some lighter replacement slates were painted in, plus some black staining produced by brushing with dry poster powder.
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An outside staircase has been provided to give access to the upper floor of the brewery Bottling Hall at the back of the brewery yard. The two flights of stairs were adapted from mouldings from Ratio signal box kits, and the landings were scratch-built from Evergreen styrene strip and Evergreen planked sheet.
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Meanwhile some further work has been done on other buildings adjoining the backscene. The Blanket Mill and its adjoining office building have now acquired stairs up to the doors. (I am not satisfied with the building in front of the mill, which was adapted from the original card mock-up, and this will be replaced.)
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A small cottage has been provided for the mill foreman, and to the right of this there will be a builder’s yard, accessed through gates from the street beyond.
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I will post more photos when things are a little more advanced.
[P.S. All these photos were taken on an i-Phone under the layout’s normal lighting.]
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